Fear & Trembling – Essay Topic 1
Kierkegaard (Silentio) heavily emphasized the individuality of truth and its inherent subjectivity in the perception of the person who seeks to explore it. He believed that faith above all else is a personal endeavor and a unique struggle and consequently faith at its core is incompatible with religion. Furthermore, he firmly denies the idea, that one can attain faith through performance of religious duties and receiving faith as a reward. Consequently, this uniqueness of faith results in its incommunicability, He illustrates this point through by distinguishing between communication of knowledge and communication of capability. Knowledge’s capacity to be relatively easily interpreted through language provides
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The complexity of faith is in this double movement, which can only be explained in terms of the preliminary movements that are required to reach faith which includes; the movement of infinite resignation and eventually the movement of faith. The movement of infinity itself requires a prerequisite itself that is one must seek to find a single desire, a singular passion that drives their existence and gives meaning to their world. As Kierkegaard believed a genuine leap into infinite resignation cannot be obtained through self-reflection and an underlying passion a true attempt must be made in reaching one’s true desires, before they can take the leap into infinite resignation. “… to concentrate the whole substance of his life and meaning of actuality into one single desire”(Page 43)
By using love as analogy for faith, Kierkegaard explains these concepts in the story of the Young Lad and the Princes. “A young lad falls in love with a princess, and this love is the entire substance of his life, and yet the relation is such that it cannot possibly be realized, cannot possibly be translated from the ideality into reality” (Page